The energy costs for example incurred in brewing beer constitute an important proportion of the total production costs of beer. As the proportion of energy costs will probably even increase with the shortage of fossil fuels and the higher energy prices involved, the applicant suggested a brewing process and a brewery installation according to the preamble each of claim 1 and claim 10 in WO 2006/100062 A1.
This generic prior art discloses a brewery installation comprising a solar system to make the brewery more independent of fossil fuel demands. The generic prior art suggests to satisfy at least a portion of the thermal energy demand of heat consumers of the brewery installation from energy not originating from fossil fuels, but from solar collectors converting the energy of solar radiation into thermal energy.
For this, the solar collectors are designed such that the hottest fluid required for the brewing process can be heated to a temperature of at least 120° by solar energy. The thermal energy generated by the solar collectors is, for example, temporarily stored in a high pressure stratified storage that receives fluid. The heated fluid is guided from the upper region of the heat store via a pipe to different heat consumers to which heat is released via heat exchangers. After heat has been released, the fluid has a final temperature and is returned to the heat store via a return pipe.
To increase the efficiency of the heat store, and accordingly of the complete brewery installation, stratified storages in which different temperature zones are formed are known from prior art. The returned fluid is guided into the temperature zone in which the temperature of the fluid located in this temperature zone of the stratified storage approximately corresponds to that of the returned fluid. For this, DE 197 31 351 A1, for example, suggests to dispose an ascending pipe in the stratified storage which extends along the longitudinal axis of the stratified storage. The ascending pipe comprises several openings spaced apart in the longitudinal direction through which the returned fluid can flow into different temperature zones of the stratified storage.
From DE 100 25 318 Cl, another stratified storage is known. This known stratified storage comprises a bent distributor pipe in its lower region which is coupled to several ascending pipes. The returned fluid can be either introduced into the stratified storage via an opening of the distributor pipe, or via the ascending pipes connected to the bent distributor pipe.
However, with the stratified storages known from DE 197 31 351 A1 and DE 100 25 318 Cl, fluids having different temperatures might get mixed within the stratified storage, resulting in a reduction of the efficiency of the stratified storage and accordingly of a complete brewing process.